Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1904 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capitol. Special Correspondence to The Democrat: Moßt of the White House clerks are on a vacation now and there is no visible activity around the Executive premises except the silent coming and going of tourists. The single clerk still on duty at the white annex has little information of value to politicians, but yesterday announced that the President’s letter of acceptance will not be issued until September 12th and possibly 15th. Judge Parker’s letter will greet the public a week later. This is quite in accordance with the purpose of the Democratic national committee to have a very short, sharp and lively campaign, not beginning till October. The solitary clerk who sits behind the Federal inkstand as above mentioned, announces with an air of boastful superiority that the Republican committee has closed contracts for 525 tons df white paper to be used for campaign literature. Five Chicago paper jobbers have the contracts and some twenty paper mills are busy turning out the stuff in its immaculate form of harmlessness. The Tribune correspondent figures that the paper when it has become offensive with ink and gall, would be sufficient to lay a paper sidewalk all the way to California, or Patagonia, the quantity increasing with each repetition. Democrats do not pretend that they are going to use more than a hundred thousand acres of paper, but they mean to glut the l\ S. mails with it during September and October. T t t Xhe famous old Long Bridge, which, for a generation has been the only connection between our northeastern and southeastern states, has permanently retired from business. The new doubletrack bridge built at a cost of $750,000, has been opened this week. It is half a mile long and a marvel of engineering skill. A brilliant coat of red paint brings the great steel structure out in bold relief, contrasting it with the blue river and sky and the green of luxuriant foliage. The old bridge crouches, friendless and tottering in the shadow of its successor, doubtless remembering, before it plunges to oblivion, the proud days when it extinguished the commercial life of Georgetown and, two generations later, when it bore the tramp of a million men marching to meet the hosts of the South. The passing of the old bridge and the dedication of the new may be said to be accomplished during these weeks by the transit of th.e tens of thousands of soldiers and thousands of commissary wagons moving to the mock battle of Bull Run around and beyond Manassas. Three headquarters have already been established on the "contested” ground, the warlike appearance of the vast area of a hundred square miles being broken only by a solitary Quaker who obstinately sits in the middle of it upon hie 300 acres and refuses to permit the hostile legions to trespass on his land. The scream of the bugles and the throb of the drums are alresdy heard across the river, and Friend Pearley sits triumphant in his doorway and laughs

derisively to behold the expenditure of a million and a half of dollars to enable vast brigades and divisions of parading men to fire blank cartridges at each other, make flanking manouvers, and delight the imperialistic spirit of the American President. t t t Another great naval Scandal has broken out this week. Forty seizures of dutiable merchandise have been made in San Francisco, revealing a wholesale smuggle of oriental goods. There are more than one hundred cases of goods in all, worth tens of thousands of dollars, many of them consigned to commander Bull and Bear-Ad-miral Stirling. Probably Secretary Shaw will simply reprimand the offenders, as he did the naval officers who smuggled into Porto Rico, for the cases seem exactly similiar. Secretary Shaw told your correspondent that he should Jet those offenders off with a reprimand, while native Porto Ricans were still in jail and had been there for a year, for doing precisely the same thing. t t t The high water mark for pensions was reached September 80, 1902, when the rolls carried 1,000,732 names. There is one Revolutionary widow on the pension rolls to-day—Esther S. widow of Noah Daimon of Vermont. She must have married at 17 when her husband was 70. He served as follows: Six days from April 19, 1775, in Captain Tucker’s company; twenty-five days in Captain Summer’s company; sixtyfive days in Captain French’s j company; three months in Captain Thomas White’s company; three months in Captain Lapham's company; thirty-seven days in Captain Clapp’s company; nine days in Captain Abner Crane’s company; thirty-one days in Captain Richard’s company and eight months in Captain Champney’s company. These companies were generally in different regiments, and the record shows the curious instability of military service during the Revolution. The last survivor of that war died in 1869, aged 109 years. t t t The citizens of Washington and visitors are being entertained now by an unusual exhibition of war vessels in the Potomac. There are the battleships Texas and Massachusetts, the monitors Arkansas, Florida, and Nevada, eight torpedo-boat destroyers and the training-ship Hartford, the old flagship in which Admiral Farragut led the fleet up Mobile Bay. The squadron is in commaud of Rear-Admiral Sand, and the big guns frowning over the water and the decks crowded with sailor lads in white duck present a picturesque spectacle rarely seen here. f f f MacMonnie’s statute of General McClellan proves acceptable and will stand on the triangle at 18th and N. streets. Fifty thousand dollars was appropriated for it by Congress.... Vice Presidential candidate Davis is in this city and will start next week on a stumping tour, to set the pace for the other youngsters... .Col. Biddle, Engineer Commissioner of the District, has returned from an inspection of the Panama Canal zone. He thinks it a wonderfully salubrious spot, and a nice place to live. But his friends notice that he didn’t stay there... .Pension clerka went down the river yesterday to hear their Chief Commissioner Ware read a new poem. Was the invitation equivalent to a command?